Traditionally, companies that serve web based advertisements generated revenue based on the number of times an advertisement is shown. Tracking the number of times an advertisement is served is a fairly straight forward process. However, this does not necessarily correspond to the value an advertiser receives for the money spent. As such, another method was developed that related revenue to the number of times that the advertisement was clicked. This system was more complex. However, the action of clicking was recognized at the time the advertisement was shown. Therefore, while tracking the click required additional processing, the clicking was closely tied to the advertisement and could be easily accommodated due to the sequential and synchronous nature.
More recently, it has been recognized that advertisements that do not immediately produce a click, still may have additional value as user may still see the advertisement and visit the advertiser's website at a later time. Further, advertisements that are clicked on still only loosely correspond to the value received by the advertiser. For example, a click on an advertisement does not necessarily mean that the user will purchase anything from the user.
Accordingly it can be seen that there is a need for an improved system and method for attributing conversion events to advertisements.